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Kate Leth’s #simpofriends is Joy

Growing up I had a love for The Simpsons that was greatly fueled by the fact that it was not allowed in our house. (I’d say “banned”, but can you really ban something that syndicates in the slice of time when your children are home from school but you’re still at work before parental locks existed? No, you can’t.) I never became the huge fan that some of my friends were, but there’s no denying that some of those episodes that aired during my childhood were some of the best things I’ve ever seen. (“Summer of 4 ft. 2” particularly spoke to me in a way that television, on a whole, never had before, in a way that 10-year-old me could not articulate.)

Since the 90s I’ve dropped and picked up the show, losing some love during some bad episodes, coming back for the HD, loving or at least being amused by newer jokes, falling in the nostalgia hole when FXX does its days-long marathons.

All of this intro is to talk about how Kate Leth, one of my favorite comic artists and Internet people, has been putting up goofy comics riffing on The Simpsons all summer, #simpofriends. it’s a bunch of simple line art done on actual lined yellow paper. It kind of makes fun of the show (“The bad father has arrived.” “Oh no.”) and kind of honors it, it’s goofy (Milhouse is a vampire?) and straightforward (Homer hates his sisters-in-law, they don’t care), and it’s a little dumb and kind of smart. Basically simpofriends is great and perfect, and my day lights up whenever a new one pops up on my Instagram feed. I don’t know how long Kate Leth plans on doing this, but I hope it’s basically forever, or at least another year.